The Facts As I See Them
by Sanctuaria
Summary: Before marrying a best-selling author, before becoming the star detective of the Twelfth Precinct, before 3XK even earned his name, there was a young cop by the name of Kate Beckett with a burning drive to solve the case that destroyed her family: her mother's murder. But this event is the only thing—besides Richard Castle—that could cause her to question everything. Two-shot.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Just an idea that came to me while writing Convalescence that I finally got around to finishing. Will be posted in two parts. Enjoy!**

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_Fourteen Years Ago - 1987_

"No," her father said in an unusually sharp voice. He forcibly moved her small, eight-year-old hand away from the store window by the wrist. "No, Katie. Guns are not toys. They are dangerous, and they can hurt you or other people. I never want to see you holding or even touching a gun. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Daddy," Katie replied solemnly, staring up at him with big hazel eyes. To show her sincerity, she no longer looked longingly at the toy rubber band gun separated from them by half an inch of glass.

A few feet away, her mother said goodbye to her friend, walking back to them with eyebrows slightly raised at the sound of her husband using his stern voice. "What's going on?" she asked, looking between them.

"Guns," Jim Beckett replied, gesturing at the store.

Knowing at once what he meant, Johanna added, "You know what Mommy does, right, sweetie?"

Katie shifted focus to her mother. "Yes. You're a lawyer. You send bad guys to jail."

"Not jail, honey, prison," her mother corrected gently. "If they're just going to county jail Mommy's doing her job wrong. But yes, they're bad guys. And most of them use guns. Do you understand that? Guns aren't fun, and you shouldn't ever need to have one."

"Yes, Mommy," the young girl said again.

Jim tousled her hair. "We love you, Katie. We just want to keep you safe."

* * *

_Present Day - 2004_

Police officer Kate Beckett leaned up against her squad car, rear pressed against the warm metal and elbows on her knees. Her head was in her hands, and her sloppy ponytail was rapidly coming undone at the awkward angle of her body. She was covering her face with her hands as best she could, but failing miserably at fully blocking out the rest of the world as it continued turning without her. Her service cap was at risk of falling to the concrete but for once she didn't care.

Other uniforms like her were swarming the scene, and everywhere around she could hear trunks shutting and car doors slamming. She could just make out the raucous snarl of a leashed German shepherd of the K-9 division from somewhere in the vicinity, itching to be let loose to track down and apprehend the second suspect.

The second one. Because she had shot the first.

The body was still lying there where it fell. She could feel its presence, just as readily as she could feel when someone tapped her shoulder. She looked up into the concerned eyes of one of her fellow beat cops, Officer Vaughan. "You good?" he asked. She stood hurriedly, taking off her cap to sweep a few loose hairs back under it. She pulled it back on so it fit snugly around the crown of her head. "Just asking 'cause Sarge will be here in a sec."

Kate nodded her thanks, smoothing over her uniform and trying to get a grip on herself before having to face her commanding officer. "Officer Vaughan, I need you back at the yellow tape," barked the sergeant. He strode over to them and Vaughan made himself scarce as the sergeant rounded Kate's Crown Victoria to stand in front of her. A foot taller than she was, he cut an intimidating figure, although word around the precinct was that his bark was worse than his bite. "Officer Beckett," the Sergeant stated.

"Yes, sir." She stood as straight as she possibly could.

"Can I get your statement on what happened, Beckett?"

"Yes, sir. I was patrolling 7th Avenue when I responded to a 10-13U on the radio for a robbery in progress. It came through as shots fired a few seconds later, and by the time I arrived Officers Ceccarelli and Marks were already in pursuit. There were two suspects, and one of them disappeared into that warehouse over there and the other paused to raise his gun at us. I shot him twice in the chest." She had trouble keeping her voice monotone enough and keeping the tremble out of it.

The sergeant nodded, a quick, birdlike dip of his chin accompanied by a stiff, clenched jaw—probably thinking of all the extra paperwork he was going to have to do over this. Kate didn't care about the paperwork. Just the man she had shot. _Killed_.

"Officer Beckett, I need you to come back to the precinct with me immediately," the sergeant told her. "You're not in trouble, but there will be an investigation conducted by Internal Affairs about this incident like always. It's standard procedure." He held out his hand, and Kate slipped hers down to her belt and undid the small black button that secured the car keys and kept them from jingling and alerting suspects during building searches and other tactical maneuvers. She gave them to her superior, who closed his palm over them and deposited them in the glove box of his car. He gestured for her to get in and she complied easily.

The ride back to the Twelfth was spent in silence except for the ever-talkative police radio, which kept a constant chatter going throughout-belting out letters, numbers, and identifications so quickly that even on a good day deciphering them required a great deal of concentration. Right now, they were all meaningless jibber-jabber.

When they arrived, Kate kept her head down as they rode the elevator to the third floor. She felt unclean, filthy, like that man's blood was spilled all over her shirt for everyone to see, underneath her fingernails and coating her hair. There was not a drop on her, but she felt like she was soaking in it.

Her sergeant led her down the hallway and deposited her in his office. Like the rest of the Twelfth Precinct, it was made up of darker brown tones with no windows to the outside, but had one looking into the bullpen. His personal effects were scattered all over his desk—pictures of his wife and kids, pictures of his yellow Labrador. He pulled the shades on his window before he left, saying, "Wait here. I have to inform the Captain and make the call to IA." She nodded, hating how the shades made her feel more ostracized, like a kid called down to the principal's office.

What she wouldn't give to be a kid again, in a happy home and a happy life. What she wouldn't give to have her family back, whole and intact.

As she was sitting there, alone, that day came unbidden to her head. Replaying, over, and over. Her father had never once mentioned it when she applied to the Academy, nor when she got her badge. She didn't know if he even remembered the conversation that took place on that hot June day, when she learned guns were bad. Dangerous. Should she have listened?

She hadn't listened when he had said, "Don't go to that party," and that had turned out fine.

She hadn't listened when he said, "Don't buy a motorcycle," and she'd never gotten into a crash.

She hadn't listened when he had warned her against guns, and maybe this time he had been right. Somebody was dead because of her. Dead, like her mother. Who was she to inflict that upon anyone?

Kate jumped when the door opened, jerking her out of her reverie. Sergeant Matheson walked in and sat behind his desk. The man that followed him she assumed was Internal Affairs, and her heart skipped a beat in anticipation. He took a seat on the sergeant's right side, facing her and near to the door. Now it felt like a trial.

"Would you please repeat the statement you gave me for the record?" her sergeant asked, placing a small tape recorder on the desk in front of her. She did, all too aware of the piercing gray gaze of the IA man even though she kept her eyes carefully trained on her commander. As soon as she was done he clicked the recorder off.

"Officer Beckett," the man spoke. She looked at him. "As far as I can see, there has been no wrongdoing on your part in this instance. It was a clean shoot, but there will have to be an investigation to make sure everything lines up. Officer Marks has already submitted his report, which corroborates your account." She nodded again, not trusting herself to speak.

"Beckett, policy states that you will be put on desk duty until the investigation is closed, although no one would blame you if you wanted to take some time off the job," Sergeant Matheson continued. "There are also two mandatory psych sessions that you must complete before returning to active duty. You can schedule those with Marina at the front desk when we're finished here."

"Yes sir," she said. "I…I actually would like to take some time off, I think."

He looked surprised—she only ever took off one day a year—but opened the folder on his desk. "How many days?"

She paused before answering. "Just the rest of today and tomorrow."

"All right," he said, jotting it down before turning to the other man. "You have all you need, Bates?"

Bates said yes, scooped the recording off the sergeant's desk, shook his hand, and left. Kate handed over her gun to the sergeant, and he dismissed her to go home. She was glad to be rid of its weight on her belt, of the constant reminder, but even so, giving up her weapon did nothing to relieve the massive amount of guilt pressing down on her chest and suffocating her from all sides.

After changing into her civilian clothing in the precinct locker room, she made a beeline for the exit. Marina at the front desk scheduled her two appointments with a department shrink, and Kate hurried outside. She hailed a cab with a wave of her hand.

Her apartment appeared even more sparse and desolate than usual when she opened the door, light kept out by her heavy curtains. Save the bookshelf, there were no personal items at all in the living room or the tiny kitchenette; then again, there wasn't much room for any. She did have a TV, though, and briefly considered it after setting her badge in the tiny safe in the corner. She opted for a book instead, and almost picked up the newest from her favorite author off her bed, but thought better of it. She wasn't really in the mood for femme fatale, macabre, and especially not murder right then. Richard Castle's way with words in _Storm Rising_ would pull her far too much into the bloody, action-packed story.

Was she a murderer? The thought flitted into her head and as much as she tried to cast it aside, Kate couldn't shake it. The thought clung to her like a rabid animal; its claws dug deep into her insides, tearing them to shreds. She lay awake for hours into the night, eventually fetching her dictionary and reading it by the light of her phone. _Murderer: one who murders, one who commits the crime of murder._

Helpful.

She flipped almost frantically to 'murder' instead. _Murder: 1. the crime of unlawfully killing a person, especially with malice aforethought._

She dropped her phone onto her bedspread, its light extinguished by the thick covers. "I'm not a murderer," she whispered to herself in the darkness of her bedroom. "I'm not." She fell asleep, finally, hugging the book to her chest. The dead man's face haunted her dreams.

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**Thanks for reading! Any feedback you have is very much appreciated!**


	2. Chapter 2

**And here is the second and final part. Thanks for reading!**

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Her eyelids cracked open well before the wakeful flood of sensation washed over her, making her wish to be back in the numbness of sleep. A headache fogged her skull and every muscle in her body was tight and clenched. The knowledge of her actions of the previous day had not diminished significantly, still a lead weight on her chest that made her want to burrow under the covers and never come out.

It was odd to say the least, having nothing to do but lie in bed like that as opposed to her rigid schedule. Normally her alarm would go off and she would cold-shock her body into consciousness by throwing off the blankets all at once. She would hop in the shower and be out the door in twenty minutes flat, grab a coffee on the way and scald her tongue trying to imbibe it before she reached work. The life of a beat cop.

But today she was just lying there, staring up at the ceiling. She hadn't felt this bad since...since that fateful September day when they received the news of her mother's murder. Since tripping on the wet, uneven grounds of the cemetery on the day of the funeral, smearing her black dress with mud. Since the day her nineteen-year-old self realized that nothing would be the same again, that alcohol had replaced her mother in her father's life, and that it had a grip on him not even she could break. Since Kate was brutally shown that she was far from in control over _anything_.

It had gotten marginally better when she resolved to become a cop. From the start she had been destined for great things—a higher education, a higher-paying job, perhaps being the first female Chief Justice of the Supreme Court—but her mother's murder changed all that. She had entered the Academy at nineteen bright-eyed and ready to learn how to protect and serve, and Kate had learned the dignity and pride in that as well. But through it all her mother's murder was paramount, placed high on a pedestal, the goal at the end of the road. She was determined to solve it, to exact justice on the one who had taken nearly everything from her.

But now, she asked herself, at what cost.

It was well past noon before she could convince herself to get up and face the day. She hailed a taxi after skipping breakfast, giving the driver the address before she could second-guess herself. She knew she wouldn't be able to keep anything down anyway.

Had she been in her own car, she probably would have sat outside the building for a while staring up at it, working up the courage to go in while chewing the side of her cheek in apprehension. She would have run through it all in her mind over and over, why she was here, what she was going to say. She would have fixed in her mind what she learned from AA, sternly warned herself not to get her hopes up again.

But she didn't have her car, and the cabbie was waiting for her to exit. She paid him with a few scrunched bills and pushed open the passenger door, stepping out into the harsh sunlight. Loitering alone on the sidewalk in this neighborhood was no option either, so she was forced to go directly inside and ride the rickety elevator up to the tiny flat he called home. Her apartment was small, but compared to his it was spacious to the point of extravagance.

She knocked on his door, the rap of hard wood against her knuckles fortifying her resolve. It opened a few seconds later. "Katie?" Her father looked surprised, if not borderline discomfited, by her sudden and unexpected appearance.

"Dad," she said.

"What is it, Katie? Do you want to come in? It's not a good…I mean, I wasn't expecting company." Jim shifted surreptitiously to the side, but he wasn't fooling Kate for a minute hiding that beer bottle—or worse—behind the open door. The knowledge that he wasn't having any success cleaning up his act—not even trying at all, perhaps—left a bitter taste in her mouth and her stomach gave another violent turn. Her brain filed it away as yet another piece of her existence she, evidently, had no control over whatsoever.

"I need to talk to you," she told him plainly. Her anger at the bottle flared up again, that he would put it over talking with his daughter, and she added, "You can drink yourself back into oblivion afterwards if you want." Maybe it was something in her voice, the underlying pain and fear ineffectually masked under snark and spite, or maybe it was the cascade of tears beginning to forge its way down her face, but his eyes softened. He opened the door further, set the bottle—beer, after all—down on the side table, and guided her inside with a soft touch.

"What's going on, Katie?" he asked as soon as they were both seated on the couch. He watched her impassively as she recounted the event, including her memory of that June day and her notion that she might be a murderer.

"Oh, Katie," he said when she had finished, and extended his arm around her. Sobs wracked her frame as she soaked his shirt with salty tears. "You're not a murderer, and I would love you even if you were. If it means you're safe, I'm all for having one less thug on the streets—even if that means killing him." She tucked herself further into his chest at those words, burrowing in and away from the hard fact that she had taken a life—a human life. "You did the right thing, Katie. I know it's hard, but you didn't have a choice. It's better that he's dead than you or one of your fellow officers or...or some unfortunate civilian who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time." Her stomach clenched painfully.

"I just…I just feel like I've failed Mom," Kate choked out, words muffled by her father's shirt. "She didn't like violence, and…"

Jim pulled his daughter away from him and held her at arm's length, lifting her chin up with one hand to force her to look her into his eyes. "The facts as I see them are this, Katie," he began. "He pulled a gun on you. You prevented him from using it. It was self-defense, and your mother up in heaven understands that. She saw it all, Katie, and right now she's looking down at us and the thing she wants most in the world is to sit down next to you and tell you it's okay." She trembled, but her eyes remained locked with his.

"How do you know?"

"Because I loved her, and she loved you."

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The elevator creaked as it rose upward, and she fervently hoped it wouldn't stop on any more floors or she'd be late for this morning's briefing with Sergeant Matheson and her fellow uniforms. This being her first day back, even if just for desk duty, she hated the idea of being late despite the fact that she had no control over New York City traffic. She stood stiffly to the right of center in the elevator, as one additional person occupied it. As the doors dinged open, the man in the suit with the kindly face turned to her. "Officer Beckett, isn't it?" She nearly jumped in surprise that he was addressing her; normally captains left it to the sergeants to deal with individual uniforms, and he wasn't even part of her division.

"Yes, sir," she stood at attention.

"Would you come to my office for a moment?" he requested, bemusing her further. "It won't take long."

"Of course, sir," she responded automatically, mind running a mile a minute. He led her through the unfamiliar hallways of this floor and showed her to a seat in his office.

"I read the report on what happened last Tuesday," Captain Montgomery said. "You've completed your two psych evals?"

"One, sir," she said. "The other is this afternoon." Wasn't this something her sergeant was supposed to check over? Why was he concerning himself with it?

"Do you feel you're ready to return to work?" the captain asked, adding, "Permission to speak freely, Officer Beckett."

She took a deep breath, brow furrowing. "I honestly don't know, sir." His intent gaze urged her to elaborate. "I'm still reliving that day in my mind, wondering if non-lethal force could have been used. The taser, or something. And why I didn't reach for it instead."

"Officer, trust me when I say most of us in the higher levels have all been where you are right now." Montgomery paused, appraising her with a piercing blue gaze. "You're trying for Detective, right?"

"Yes, sir." She was scared of where this line of questioning was heading, of whether he would tell her to wait a few years—that based on her reaction to this she wasn't ready. Or worse, advise her to drop the idea altogether. That was not an option for her. She refused to give up on finding her mother's killer.

She refused to let all of this be for naught.

"And which division are you requesting?"

"Yours, sir. Homicide."

Captain Montgomery nodded. "When it's time, I'll make sure you get it."

She looked up at him, surprised. "If I may ask, sir, why?"

He smiled. "You've got guts, Officer Beckett. Coming in here, being willing to talk to me. Admitting to a superior officer how shooting another human being made you feel. I know a lot of cops—good cops—that would just hide from that, or drown it in something else. You took responsibility. You held yourself accountable. And you were honest about something few police officers are honest about. You're driven, and you're smart. I want someone like that on my team."

"Sir?" Kate asked, pausing at the door.

"Yes, Beckett?"

"It would be an honor to be on it."

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